Austen has a rather large 8th grade humanities project due this year. His topic is the Main Street bridge in Randolph and what it means to the town. He will be fine tuning his exact thesis as his research goes on. But its a pretty cool project. Luckily for him, our TKD instructor, Tom Chase was also in charge of the bridge re-construction a couple of years ago. He gave us a disk full of old and new pictures of the bridge. More to come later! Today, Austen is interviewing Harriet Chase (not related to Tom Chase) from the local historical society. I get to go home early to help the other kids with their homework while Heather takes Austen to meet with Mrs. Chase. I can't wait to find out how it went!
Austen, Peter and I had a very exciting weekend, heading to Connecticut for the Northeast Technical (Poomse) championship tournament on Sunday and a 3 hour workout/seminar with Great Grandmaster Hae Man Park on Saturday. Both events were put on by Grandmaster Turgeon of Connecticut Chungdokwan. Here I am after the seminar with GGM Hae Man Park. I am told he is approximately 80 years old. He is one of the founding fathers of TKD and is GM Turgeon's instructor. GGM Park's office at TKD headquarters in Korea is next to GGM Tae Sung Lee's. GGM Lee is our instructor (Master Chase)'s instructor. Its a little complicated, but basically, GGM Park is one of the highest ranking black belts in TKD and the chairman of the group that originally wrote all of the TKD forms that we practice. It was great to learn the forms from the person that wrote the forms!We came down to the seminar with Master Chase and Miss Buckholts from the Randolph Blue Wave group. Because Master Chase was a referee for the tournament on Sunday, and we were tagging along with him, we got to have lasagna dinner at GM Turgeon's house with GGM Park and the other referees. Very cool!We all spent the night at Master Tetreault's house. The whole Tetreault family was very generous. We had a great time with them, playing cards and watching the Yankees/Angels game. Thank you so much!The next day was the tournament. Here is the Blue Wave contingent. Miss Pavlo came down from Burlington to compete and Master Robinson was a referee. Mr. and Mrs. Elliot came down too!It was the first tournament the boys have ever competed in that was not in Randolph, so there were some nerves to contend with! They both competed very well. There were a lot of competitors from GM Turgeon's gyms in Connecticut, but people came from all over. Several from Pennsylvania, also New York, Massachusetts and probably other gyms too. Here's Peter. . . . . and Austen. The boys were in different divisions. They each performed 2 forms of their choice. There were 5 judges or referees scoring electronically --- similar to how figure skating or gymnastics is scored. The highest and lowest scores are thrown out. They have a max of 5 points each for presentation and technical correctness -- for each form. It was all smiles after the event. Blue Wavers got 2 firsts and 2 seconds. The scores for Austen and Peter are below --- This is their first time with this scoring system.
Thanks to Master Chase for taking us. We're already thinking about when to compete next. Maybe all of us will compete next time! Peter doing Form 7 (Tae guk chil jang). Austen doing Form 8 (Tae guk pal jang).
Blue Wave TKD Summer Camp 2009 was a blast --- as usual! This year Friday night testing included me testing for recommended black belt! WOOHOO!
The Black Belt Board is ready. Randolph dojang is watching.My parents were there to watch!After the first group of candidates testing for decided black belt, my group went on the mats for the recommended testing. Line-up for testing is by age within each rank. Surprisingly to me, I was 4th oldest of the 6 candidates. Usually, I'm the gray-beard! We had a kibbons (warm-ups), followed by poomse (forms), free kicking, ho shin sool (self-defense), sparring, one-step sparring and board breaking.I had 2 sparring matches with Drew from the Hinesburg dojang. After the testing I realized I probably broke my left big toe! Saturday and Sunday are full of work-outs and group activities. This is our 4th year at summer camp, so now all the kids meet up with their buddies from other dojangs. Here's Cora, Ella and Britney.
Austen has a rather large 8th grade humanities project due this year. His topic is the Main Street bridge in Randolph and what it means to the town. He will be fine tuning his exact thesis as his research goes on. But its a pretty cool project. Luckily for him, our TKD instructor, Tom Chase was also in charge of the bridge re-construction a couple of years ago. He gave us a disk full of old and new pictures of the bridge. More to come later!
Today, Austen is interviewing Harriet Chase (not related to Tom Chase) from the local historical society. I get to go home early to help the other kids with their homework while Heather takes Austen to meet with Mrs. Chase. I can't wait to find out how it went!
